Gallery and Adult Education Centre in the Czech Republic

In 1909, the Winternitz brothers from Pardubice commissioned the Czech architect Josef Gočár to design a flour mill. The site was centrally located, just north of the historic town centre. The mill survived the socialist era and only closed in 2013. Ten years later, the town and a private investor have brought the mill complex back to life. A total of four architectural practices were involved in the extensive revitalisation programme – Including Prokš Přikryl, who gave the Gočár Mill a new lease of life as an arts and events venue.

The entrance to the gallery is protected from the weather under the cantilevered upper floors. In the background is the renovated mill building from 1909. © Aleš Jungmann

Šépka Architekti of Prague won the contract for the outdoor facilities and a new building at the northern end of the site. The latter combines two very different uses under one roof: the lower two floors are reserved for the municipal gallery, while the two upper floors house the Sféra institution, a kind of hybrid between an adult education centre and a fab lab, offering educational programmes and workshops for everyone. The two uses are clearly separated both spatially and architecturally: the brick-paved forecourt continues in the outer walls of the gallery – and in the form of a large seating gallery on its roof. A wide, horizontal awning provides shade for visitors when needed. The upper floors, on the other hand, are clad in a Corten steel facade, supported by two staircase cores.

Most of the rooms in the Municipal Gallery are two-storeyed and lit by skylights. © Aleš Jungmann

The art gallery can be flexibly rearranged using folding walls and sliding doors to accommodate one or more separate exhibitions. On the ground floor, a number of large window openings provide a view of the gallery's activities. The floor above contains additional exhibition spaces, as well as several offices and an artist's apartment. Sféra's floor plan includes seminar rooms – four per floor, at either end of the building – and workshops. There is also a teachers' room on the entrance floor and, opposite, a two-storey projection room designed to introduce visitors to natural phenomena.

On the upper floors, the rooms are characterised by a massive grid of ceiling beams. X-shaped columns in the facade level support the load. © Aleš Jungmann

Despite all the differences, there are also similarities between the buildings: the upper floors of both the gallery and the adult education centre are lit by skylights, and all the building materials are tone-on-tone in brick-red. This is particularly true of the concrete structure of the upper floors. The ceilings are supported by an impressive grid of 3 x 3 m beams that span the interior space for 9 m without columns. The grid of beams in turn rests on striking X-shaped facade columns. The architects were guided by a desire for material honesty in their design: all the brick walls are load-bearing, as is the exposed concrete, and the Corten steel cladding on the upper floors is immediately recognisable as a lightweight infill.